


A Letter From The Past

by Outstander43



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Episode: s02e13 Dragonfly in Amber, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25039492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outstander43/pseuds/Outstander43
Summary: Mrs. Graham had warned me not to spend my days chasing a ghost. And so I hadn’t. But now that I was here, the ghosts were starting to chase me.
Relationships: Brianna Randall Fraser MacKenzie/Roger MacKenzie Wakefield, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Comments: 16
Kudos: 105





	A Letter From The Past

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thank you so much to my amazing betas, Bea, Brittney, and Liz!
> 
> \- This is my first fic in the Outlander fandom!  
> \- This is a one-shot fic

The morning after the funeral, I awoke with a lump in my throat and a pit at the bottom of my stomach. I thought perhaps the feeling was simply from the sorrow I felt at having not only to say goodbye to the Reverend but also at having discovered that Mrs.Graham had passed not too long ago. Frank was close to the Reverend. Closer than I had been, so Brianna and I decided to attend the funeral for Frank. I, however, had always been most fond of Mrs. Graham. When I returned all those years ago, she mended my heart in a way I didn’t think was possible. She was gentle and kind, almost like a mother to me. To be perfectly honest, it was a relief to have someone to talk to about Jamie after Frank had made me promise never to speak his name again. At least with Mrs. Graham, I was able to breathe life to his name, to his memory. I had already grieved Jamie and accepted that he truly was gone, but with this news it seemed I was about to start grieving him again. 

The sound of Bree’s laughter rising from the kitchen downstairs, shook me from my daydream. I looked around the room, allowing my eyes to readjust to my consciousness when I realized I had been crying. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and peeled myself out of bed. I walked over to the vanity across the room and looked at myself in the mirror, just long enough to make sure I hadn’t left evidence of my emotional start to the morning. I quickly got dressed and made myself presentable. 

As I made my way down the hallway and began walking down the stairs, I was stopped by the joyous noise coming from the kitchen. Bree and Roger. The two of them were giggling back and forth with one another like school children playing in the courtyard. It was a sound I had missed, Bree’s laughter. She hadn’t laughed like that since before Frank had passed. It seemed that he took a small part of Brianna with him when he died, a part I was worried would never be returned. At this moment, however, I sensed a small bit of that missing joy being returned to her and it was enough to make me well up again. 

  
  
_“Good morning, darling”._ I said, giving Brianna a kiss on her forehead. “ _Roger, good morning.”_

_“Morning, mamma. We made coffee if you want some. It’s over in the pot”_

Roger quickly stood up and said, “ _I’ll get it for ye!”_

_“Roger, don’t be silly. Please. Sit. I can manage. You two keep talking, I didn’t mean to interrupt”_

  
Roger hesitated a moment before Bree took his arm and gestured to him to sit down. He gave me a quick smile and nod, and then took his seat. I could tell from the aroma in the air that the coffee he had brewed for us was the same coffee Mrs. Graham had brewed for Frank and I all those years ago. Another reminder. Another ache in my heart. 

“ _Mamma, Roger was just telling me about a few places around town that he wants to show me. A few libraries, a museum and a place called….oh shoot what was it called? An Gearastan Dubh?”_

_“Ah, good job with yer Gaelic there. Ye said it perfectly.”_

_“Thank ye”_ She said with a giggle. “ _I think that translates to..”_

_“The Black Garrison. Fort William.”_

My throat almost closed completely as the words left my body. Fort William. The very place where Jamie had been flogged by Jack Randall. A place I knew well and wished I could forget. Scotland, however, seemed hell-bent on dredging up every memory I was forced to push out of my mind over the years. 

“ _Aye, Fort William, yes. Ye know of the place then, Miss Randall?”_

_“Please, call me Claire. And yes, I’ve….read about it many times. It’s horrible, the things that happened there. The pain.”_

I turned towards the cupboards to shield my eyes from Bree and Roger, careful not to meet their own. I feared my reaction to the name might give away my secrets.

“ _Huh. Well, I for one would love to see it. It’s what I love most about history. Standing in a place that has so much to tell. Ghosts from the past. It’s exciting. Mamma, did you want to join us?”_

_“Oh, uhm. No, darling. You two go on and enjoy your day together.”_

_“Are you sure? We don’t mind you joining, really”_

_“I’m sure. I have a few places of my own I’d like to go and visit while I’m here.”_

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The drive took me no time at all. It was as if my soul had taken control of the car. It knew exactly how to get there, every direction came second nature. As I pulled into the muddied driveway, my heart started to pound and my stomach started to flutter. I felt nervous but I didn’t quite know why. I was half-expecting to find someone there waiting for me, even though I knew that the only people I wanted to see, greeting me by the archway, were long gone. Only ghosts now. Walking the grounds, protecting it. The closer I drove to the stone archway, the more my hands shook.

“ _Pull yourself together, Claire Fraser.”_

As I put the car in park, I found myself struggling to get out. For a moment all I could do was look out the window and marvel at the sight. The tan bricks, once bright and clean, were now covered in grime and twisted vines. The windows which once contained life on the other side, sealed with bright glass panes, were now just empty frames. As I mustered the strength to get out of the car and shut the door behind me, I looked around, further inspecting the grounds. I felt the pit in the bottom of my stomach drop even lower and my heart begin to ache more. Lallybroch seemed like a foreign place to me now. It was lifeless and cold. Broken bits of old wagons and other various things lay up against the house. Vines grew out of the empty windows and a “For Sale” sign lay in the mud at the foot of the steps. Steps that were once silver and strong, now broken and a dirty shade of brown. I took a deep breath and suddenly, like a ghost whispering behind me, I could hear Jamie's voice.

“ _My father, he built this place ye ken. His blood and sweat are in this stone.”_

I remembered the laughter of Jenny’s children as they ran around the yard and garden and just as Jamie's voice came back to me, so did Jenny’s. I had expected to feel my heartache for Jamie upon returning here, but I hadn’t given any thought to what I might feel upon remembering Jenny and Ian. Remembering any of them at any given moment was hard enough, but to be reminded of them all at once...to feel their presence again, was all so overwhelming. 

I ascended the broken steps and walked up to the door. The once-mighty door that clanged heavily as it closed behind you, was now broken bits of wood. An old rusted chain with a “Keep Out” sign on it, kept it shut. “Keep Out,” a phrase hardly ever thought of at Lallybroch; let alone muttered out loud. Lallybroch used to be a warm and inviting place. A safe place. But now it was empty, hollow, and broken. I started to feel sick to my stomach and sat down on the steps. Looking around, I realized I had sat in this very spot 200 years prior, holding Jenny’s newest babe that I helped deliver. I remembered how at home I felt. Like I belonged nowhere else, but right here with Jamie and his family. My family. 

I looked over towards the stone archway and I imagined Jamie standing there. Jamie, _my_ Jamie, in his kilt and tartan, his red curls falling just past the nape of his neck. I remembered him just as I had last seen him. I recalled a poem Jamie had recited to me once. 

“ _Come and let us live, my Dear, let us love and never fear. Then let amorous kisses dwell on our lips, begin and tell a thousand and a hundred, score, a hundred, and a thousand more.”_

_“Oh, Jamie. Why? Why did it have to end like this?”_

As hard as I tried to control myself, I just couldn't. Being back here, I could still feel the life that once walked this ground, that sense of family and love that still lingered in the ground beneath me. Hearing their voices in my head again, sounding so close and yet so far away from me, I broke down, for the first time in what seemed like 200 years. Maybe it was. It felt safe to cry here. I let my head drop to my knees and allowed all the emotions that I had held back for the past 20 years to flow through me. The stream of tears falling from my face hit the stone steps and washed away some of the dirt and revealed a small patch of silver stone. It’s as if my tears were washing away the last 200 years of neglect. 

I sat there crying for what felt like hours. I released years of pent up heartache and for a moment, I felt better. I felt freed somehow. 

  
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………  
  


It was beginning to get dark. While my soul had helped guide me back to Lallybroch, I wasn’t so sure if it would be of any use in guiding me back to Bree and Roger. I wiped my eyes and stood up, brushing my jacket off. I looked around the grounds once more, taking it all in. After all, I didn’t know if I would ever be back here again and I wanted to bring its memory back to Boston with me.

I started to get back into the car when a large gust of wind suddenly hit me with such force, it knocked my glasses to the ground. I picked them up and started cleaning them off with my jacket. As I placed them back on my face, something caught my eye over by the garden. Something white and flapping in the wind. I walked closer to inspect it and realized it was a piece of paper. It was wedged between two broken bricks. I struggled a bit to free it but finally managed. It was quite old but it had somehow been preserved despite the harsh weather in Scotland. I figured it was protected by the two bricks it lay between. I dusted the dirt off of it and flipped it over to clean the other side but the moment I turned it over, I froze. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. There, written in old broken up ink, was written “Sassenach.” I knew the handwriting well. I had seen it many times before. It was Jamie's. 

My hands began to shake, not from the cold but from my absolute disbelief. How? How could this be Jamie’s? I knew the last time he had been at Lallybroch and he hadn’t written anything, let alone hid it out here in the bricks. Even if he had, why would he have left something intended for me here when he could have simply given it to me himself? It didn’t make any sense. I walked back over to the steps and sat down with my trembling hands still holding the letter. Slowly I opened it, then unfolded its pages and began to read.

  
  
“ _Mo Nighean Donn,_

_I hope this letter finds ye, somehow. Be it God himself. Claire, I’m home. I made it home to Lallybroch. To Jenny. I’m alive, Sassenach. Culloden did its best to rid me of this world, mind ye. I was so close to death I could taste it. I was cold, empty. All around me there was nothing but death and pain. Men I had called my friends, my family. Men I had killed myself in the name of Scotland. I was surrounded by it. But nothing, nothing wounded me more than the memory of leaving you at the Stones. Of having to say goodbye to ye and our bairn. I knew it was the only thing I could do to keep ye safe. To keep ye alive. It tore my heart out to have to do that. As I lay in the cold mud, the ash falling around me like snow, I could feel my soul beginning to leave my body. I lost all feeling and everything went quiet. Completely silent and still. I was all but prepared to leave my body and leave this, a world without you, behind. But then I saw it. I saw a light. I thought for a second perhaps it was our maker coming to take me away, to bring me home. As it grew closer to me, I saw a figure standing in the light. A figure with long hair draped around its shoulders walking in a white gown. I thought for sure it was God himself. Until suddenly, it was close enough that I could see it wasn’t God. It was you, Mo Nighean Donn. You, my Sorcha. You took my cheek in your hand and whispered “Are you alive” Claire, I swear in that moment I felt my soul rejoin my body. My heart started beating faster and for a second I thought I could smell you there with me. I blinked and you were gone. You saved me, Claire. I was all but ready to let go but you saved me. You brought me back._

_Claire, I’ve spent so many days and nights wishing to have you with me. Remembering your voice, your scent, your touch. When I came back to Lallybroch, I was a broken man. Not because of the war but because I was without you. My body healed all its wounds from Culloden but my heart, Claire. My heart still mourns ye. Still calls out to ye at night. Jenny tells me I call out to ye in my sleep._

_One night, I was in a fit of rage at the thought of never seeing ye again, never holding ye in my arms again that I broke a vase over the chair next to our bed. I knelt down to pick the glass up and I saw something under the bed. Hidden behind a box of my mother's things, was one of your shifts, Sassenach. As I pulled it from under the bed the box dragged with it. I swear it’s as if my mother were holding it safe for me to find again. Saving a piece of you for me to have again. It still had your scent on it, Mo Nighean Donn. Fresh as ever, as if ye had just taken it off. I cried myself to sleep cradling your shift until your scent eventually wore off. Even then, I slept with it next to me, trying to hold some part of ye next to me. Hoping it would somehow bring ye back to me._

_I spent so many days and nights as a ghost. Walking around the halls of Lallybroch not really living, barely even existing. Jenny suggested that I write a letter to ye. Hoping it would help release some of the anger I feel for making ye leave. For saying goodbye._

_Somehow, by the grace of God himself, ye found me once. Find me again, Claire. Find this letter. Find me. I’m here, Mo Nighean Donn. I’m right here waiting for ye to return to me someday._

#  _Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,_

#  _I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One._

#  _I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done._

_P.s, look in the garden by the potatoes. If I’ve done it right, ye should find a gift from me waiting for ye”_

For what felt like an eternity, I just sat there, trembling, breathless. The earth stopped turning and everything around me went silent. Still. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I was so sure he had died at Culloden. I was positive. It was one of the bloodiest wars in history and the entire Fraser clan was reported to have died that day. 

“ _None of this makes any sense. It’s impossible. It just can’t happen”_ I told myself over and over. But then I quickly remembered that I had in fact traveled through time and that, I knew for certain was real. So this couldn’t be but so impossible...right?

But this letter. It was Jamie's handwriting. They were his words. My Jamie had lived. 

I stood and walked over to the garden like he had said to do in the letter and sure enough, there, blooming underneath the twisted vines and weeds, was my gift. The most beautiful and vibrant bushel of Forget Me Nots I had ever seen. I cleared the vines away and made a breathable area for the flowers. My mind was clouded with too many thoughts at one time and my heart was racing like a horse on a track. How could any of this be real? How could a letter written over 200 years ago have survived long enough for me to find it? How had the ink on the pages survived the rain and weather in Scotland? How had the Forget-Me-Nots been so well planted and preserved, that they continue to bloom each year? 

“ _Jamie.”_ I whispered as I clutched the letter as close to my heart as I could. 

I’m not sure what it was, whether it was a calling rising from within myself, my soul being reawakened, or Jamie himself calling out to me, but something in me started to burn. My body started to tingle and my heart started beating in a rhythm it hadn’t beat in years.

Mrs. Graham had warned me not to spend my days chasing a ghost. And so I hadn’t. But now that I was here, the ghosts were starting to chase me. If Jamie were alive, if he were waiting for me, I had to go back.

  
  


“ _Jamie. I’m coming. I’m coming”_

**Author's Note:**

> While writing fic is a new experience for me in this fandom, I have been making videos for a few years now! The following video was made to accompany this fic. I hope you enjoy! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more Jamie and Claire inspired edits!
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCI4GIQJmuo&t=5s


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